#it's crazy how i feel part of nightvale city and felt proud of our cecil for his stance against those nasty intrusive strexcorp

[honeybeebaaz]

Episode 36-missing is top 5 favorite episodes so far! It actually made me emotional

Traffic section? 10/10

There’s a man. Imagine him. He’s leaning on a fence, shirtless and weary, he seems wise near the eyes, but his impatient feet suggest insidiousness. He’s marked with dried mud and maybe some very deep but quickly healing cuts, from the tree branches most likely. Or perhaps the birds. Okay, I’m not telling you the whole truth. It was definitely the birds. Imagine these cuts and scratches, dry and brittle now but tender to the touch. He is certain he did not offend the birds, but he is uncertain whether his complacency was construed as equal to said offense.

Picture this. Picture the man leaning on the crisscrossing metal wires, waiting. The birds are gone but other things are coming. He doesn’t know specifically what, but he knows it’ll come for him. You know this, too, because I have told you. The man says nothing.

There’s never not something that has been displaced, marginalized. There’s never not something that - when feeling pressed to the wall, to a place with no room left to run - gathers its numbers, gathers its forces, and turns savagely on its oppressor, turns viciously and without inhibition even on those who merely look like its oppressor. Do you catch my meaning? Can you imagine the scene I am explaining? How much of the world makes sense to you? What does it mean to be a hero? To be a human?

The man thinks about his heart. It beats. It beats normally. Earlier it did not beat normally. Think about your own heart. Is it beating normally? Listen. I’ll give you a long moment.

[A long moment is given]

How is your heart? Do you remember the man? The one on the fence, shirtless and scarred, with the normally-beating heart? He’s not real. Take him out of the story, but leave the story. Take him out. Leave the story. Do you catch my meaning? Do you?

This has been traffic.

Followed later by this:

Remember what I said listeners? About the traffic. About the birds. Think on that. Think on lots of things. Think about heroes and whether we should even need them. The answer is we do not.

I sometimes wish I could tell you more. But I cannot. I cannot tell you everything I think you should hear because it is boring. Or it is unnecessary. Or it is very necessary but unapproved. There are many reasons I cannot always tell you what I want to tell you, but the main reason is that you need to find it out for yourself. I could preach and teach and shout and explain, but no lesson is as powerful as the lesson learned on one’s own.

You can do it. You don’t need old Cecil telling you what’s happening in town. No, I just report the news. I just arrange it. You figure it out. You learn from it. You take action. You create the meaning. It is all up to you. And given my current broadcasting situation, it may be up to you for a long time.

I better get back downstairs before they discover what I am doing. Stay tuned next for silence, self-reflection, a long pause to hear yourself think. Use that silence well

Good night night vale Good night

Oh Cecil! You lovely lovely man!